September 28, 2010

He was answering Jann Wenner's question: "What music have you been listening to lately? What have you discovered, what speaks to you these days?" I wonder what Callas arias are fulfilling his needs these days. He also says his iPod is "heavily weighted toward the music of [his] childhood: "a lot of Stevie Wonder, a lot of Bob Dylan, a lot of Rolling Stones, a lot of R&B, a lot of Miles Davis and John Coltrane." And a "lot of classical music." He makes a bow to rap music — his personal aid Reggie Love has helped him with that. And "Malia and Sasha are now getting old enough to where they start hipping me to things."

Wenner pushes him about Dylan, who recently performed at the White House. He says:

Here's what I love about Dylan: He was exactly as you'd expect he would be. He wouldn't come to the rehearsal; usually, all these guys are practicing before the set in the evening. He didn't want to take a picture with me; usually all the talent is dying to take a picture with me and Michelle before the show, but he didn't show up to that. He came in and played "The Times They Are A-Changin'." A beautiful rendition. The guy is so steeped in this stuff that he can just come up with some new arrangement, and the song sounds completely different. Finishes the song, steps off the stage — I'm sitting right in the front row — comes up, shakes my hand, sort of tips his head, gives me just a little grin, and then leaves. And that was it — then he left. That was our only interaction with him. And I thought: That's how you want Bob Dylan, right? You don't want him to be all cheesin' and grinnin' with you. You want him to be a little skeptical about the whole enterprise. So that was a real treat.

He segues on his own to the subject of Paul McCartney:

Having Paul McCartney here was also incredible. He's just a very gracious guy. When he was up there singing "Michelle" to Michelle, I was thinking to myself, "Imagine when Michelle was growing up, this little girl on the South Side of Chicago, from a working-class family." The notion that someday one of the Beatles would be singing his song to her in the White House — you couldn't imagine something like that.

Wenner asks if he cried, and he starts his response...

Whenever I think about my wife, she can choke me up. My wife and my kids, they'll get to me.

His aides make him stop the interview at that point. No crying in politics! Then he comes back a "moment later" and makes a speech to Wenner — "with intensity and passion, repeatedly stabbing the air with his finger" — about how people need to shake off their malaise lethargy.

"Later, after the TV cameras had left, [McCartney] expressed appreciation for the Library of Congress and added a zinger: 'After the last eight years, it's great to have a president who knows what a library is.'"

Obama is too young ever to have heard her sing, and her performances were famously big on drama but often short on musicality. The later recordings especially can be quite screechy. So why her and what is he listening to?

Even for a diva, she was self-absorbed; but otherwise she's about as far from No Drama Obama as you could get. Perhaps he's attracted to her most famous roles - mostly Italian heroines (Norma, Lucia, Elvira, Violetta) but with the occasional Brunnhilde thrown in. Few of them are still standing when the final curtain comes down. Perhaps he's wallowing in all that lovely doom that pervades so many of Callas' roles, to say nothing of her persona. It's a way to turn feeling sorry for yourself into high art (educated people who hate opera nevertheless feel a need to concede that it's about as high as high art gets without assistance from pharmaceuticals).

Perhaps he's attracted to her most famous roles - mostly Italian heroines (Norma, Lucia, Elvira, Violetta) but with the occasional Brunnhilde thrown in. Few of them are still standing when the final curtain comes down.

Isn't that sorta the whole point with opera, pretty much everyone ends up dead?

Reading his Dylan description, I was thinking "Oh oh, what about McCartney? He's just the uncool schmoozy type he's comparing Dylan favorably to here. He'll have to say something nice about the other 60s icon just so he's not insulted."

And he did.

Having said all that, Obama's a little young for either one of them. I seriously seriously doubt he got into Dylan until college IF EVER. Michelle would have been, what, 2-years-old or something when the Beatles' Michelle came out? I doubt she cared. She would have been the age to be more excited about seeing the Jackson 5 on Wonderama when she was 6. He older brothers may have been the age to be into Parliament or Funkadelic, etc.

I don't believe for one moment that Obama listens to Callas or any other opera, for that matter. I think she's first name of an opera singer who came to mind while he was attempting to appear cultured.

I hate 19th century opera, and Mozart's operas are completely intolerable. I don't like most opera singers, because they're usually just interested in belching out grotesquely over-emotional, over-extended, overwrought bel canto drivel. No discipline, no control, no restraint.

Handel wrote a few great ones, though. Almost nothing good happened to music after about 1750.

Of course there's another possible explanation. It could be that he's very shy when not performing and is uncomfortable being in the limelight when offstage. That would explain why he didn't want to pose for a photo or hangout with the Pres when he finished his song.

Palladian is constantly railing about Mozart. I remember him doing it at the Brooklyn meet-up. Partly it's just a pose, but partly it's not. Just incomprehensible either way. I fear for the young lad's grasp of life's essentials.

Other than just listening to post-1750 music, I have no idea what the cure might be. Perhaps he didn't spend enough time in Sprague Hall when he had the chance.